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When Carl Melander moved into the front office of Tufflite Plastics Inc. a few years ago, he knew how every machine in the company worked--well, almost every machine.

"I started working [at Tufflite] right out of high school," he said. "I've basically worked every job in the place. But it was an experience moving up front. I didn't know how to use the fax machine. I didn't know how to turn on the copier."

Today Melander is right at home as chief executive officer--and owner with his wife, Margaret--of Tufflite, the Ballston Spa manufacturing firm his parents founded nearly 50 years ago. He walks through the five-story, 100,000-square-foot building at 19 Low St. with a proud smile, showing off the company's Styrofoam floral and craft supplies and demonstrating how the injection-molding system turns polystyrene grains the size of salt crystals into dress mannequins.

The company also makes pipe insulation and does custom packaging work. As long as it's plastic foam or expandable polystyrene, "we're basically set up to do just about anything," Melander said.

The finished products will be shipped all over the United States, including Guam and Puerto Rico. They will bring Tufflite about $1 million in revenue this year.

But the factory is quiet on this Friday afternoon. Most of Tufflite's 20 employees work four 10-hour days a week.

"Not me," Melander said. "I work five 10-hour days."

That is because mastering the photocopier was only the first front-office challenge Melander would face.

When he and his wife took over the company in 1994, "things were in tight shape," he said. "The place was kind of top-heavy, if you know what I mean. I had to clean house. It was almost like starting from scratch."

At the time, Tufflite was in something of a transition period. In fact, it still is working to adapt to a changing marketplace.

The company was formed in 1948 to produce supplies for the floral industry, specifically the plastic foam shapes--crosses, balls, wreaths, horseshoes and so on--around which florists create their arrangements. Melander's father, Raymond, obtained a license from Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co. to purchase and resell the special white and green varieties of Styrofoam--the best-known brand of plastic foam--designed for the work he wanted to do.

"Only 10 or 12 fabricators in the country can sell [these types of] Styrofoam," Melander said. "There are no more of these licenses to be had. We've had ours for 50 years."

The floral supply industry is a rather large market. In fact, "the foam business is an international business all by itself," said William Tinsley, spokesman for the Wholesale Florist and Florist Supplies of America, a Vienna, Va.-based trade group.

But Tufflite found its niche. It actually was Raymond Melander--himself a florist--who invented the green foam block into which flowers usually are inserted and water is held.

"They used to use chicken wire," Carl Melander said. "They would bend it around the stems. My father ground up scrap Styrofoam and made those blocks you see now. It made it much easier [for florists]."

But while Tufflite's floral business was taking off, another side of the company was also growing. It began with injection-molded mannequins and developed into work for such well-known companies as Seagrams, Löwenbrau and Nabisco. Evelyn Melander, Carl's mother, would use her artistic talents to design such promotional items as large crowned "7"s, oversized beer mugs and huge Oreo cookies, which Tufflite then would fabricate.

For a time, such items were a staple for Tufflite. Today, they largely are memories.

"It's evolution, I guess," Carl Melander said. "The market has changed dramatically. Take Seagrams ... they were one of our largest customers. Now Seagrams does its own designs and bids out the fabrication work."

The company still makes molded mannequins, "but not as much," primarily because of some problems at its main customer, Melander said.

In the late 1980s, Tufflite's sales were in the $2.5 million range and about 50 people reported for work each day. But as the display and mannequin work declined, so too did employment and sales.

Now, the floral supply business with which Tufflite started again accounts for about 80 percent of its business. Unfortunately, "that is a rather stagnant market," Melander said.

According to the Produce Marketing Association, a Newark, Del.-based trade group whose membership includes wholesale florists, sales of fresh flowers and greens, artificial blooms and related materials have flattened out over the past decade. Between 1989 and 1990, nationwide sales grew 27 percent, to $12.6 billion. But they remained in that range until 1994, when they hit $13.2 billion. In 1995, the last period for which figures are available, sales totaled $14.1 billion.

Now, "we're trying to get more into the craft market," Melander said. "That uses a lot of the same products."

For example, a Styrofoam cone used in some floral arrangements also can be used to make a decorative Christmas tree. A few Styrofoam balls can make a snowman.

"You don't have to be in the floral business to use these items," said the Wholesale Florist's Tinsley. "Anyone can use them."

And the craft industry is growing--"extremely," said Noelle Backer, associate editor of The Craft Report, a Wilmington, Del.-based magazine.

"Right now, more and more people are getting into the craft field," she said. "And it's changing. People used to make things at home and try to sell them, but now more and more of them are turning into small businesses. It's more of a marketable industry."

Dealing with the craft industry also gives Tufflite a bit of flexibility.

"With the floral industry, we have rules," Melander said. "We can't sell to retailers, only wholesalers. But with crafts, it's a new market for us. There are no rules. We're going after places like Wal-Mart."

But chances are, so are a number of other suppliers.

"Most of this [Styrofoam] stuff has become a commodity over the years," Melander said. "That cuts your profit margin. The challenge is to try to move into new, more profitable products your competitor doesn't have."

Its first such product is the "Quicky Quilt." Crafters have for years purchased squares of plastic foam and carved designs in them, which they then would cover with fabric--using the cuts as seams--to create a quilt-like picture. Tufflite took this idea a step further, developing its own patterns and engraving them onto Styrofoam. All the crafter need do is tuck in scraps of fabric.

Quicky Quilts are sold in a variety of ways. Tufflite is working with some fabric stores that want just the Styrofoam patterns, so that crafters will purchase scraps of material. Craft stores, however, want complete kits.

The company's pipe insulation and packaging businesses also provide room for a little innovation. Tufflite worked with one home builder to design insulation that covers both the cold and hot pipes of an outside woodstove, and teamed up with General Electric Co. to create a freeze jacket for clamping over nuclear pipes in need of repair. And it has the capability to produce custom-packaging components for anything from screwdrivers to dashboard parts.

"They show me the design and tell me what they need, and I do it," Melander said.

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